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Letters From North America |
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As I recall, there is a law in physics that says something like…”An object thrown up, must come down.” Or another one that says for every action there is a reaction. In other words, there is an opposite of everything that we do, in one way or another. If we throw a ball into the air, it will come down sooner or later. If we kick over a pot plant, the plant falls, spills dirt on the carpet and your wife gets mad. No, that’s not it exactly, but you get the drift. Anyway, if we are to believe in the laws of science, then we have to believe that the laws of chance must work for us as often as they do against us. You throw a coin into the air and the odds of it landing on heads are the same as it is for it to land on tails. I can go along with all of that, but when you apply it to my luck, I am way overdue for a big dose of good. Take the lottery for example. If we read the back of the lottery tickets, you’ll see that your chances of winning are about 1 zillion to 1. But, every week we read about somebody working as a service station attendant hitting the big one for mucho millions. But, is it ever anyone you or I know? Nope. Is it ever you or I? Nope, again. Now, I know people that take the lottery real serious. They buy books on what numbers to pick based on an interpretation of their dreams or other time proven methods. They still don’t win. They look for signs from heaven and if they see 6 black cars in a row, they think this is God telling them to pick number 6 or such. I’ve been picking numbers like the rest of you for a number of years and what’s it got us? Nothing but a bunch of old lottery tickets that we hang onto for some weird reason or another. I think we do this since we have it in our brains that this week’s winner will be declared a fraud or something and they’ll do the numbers over again and we might win the second time. Fat chance of that happening. Do you remember any time in your life where they called the lottery again? Throw those tickets away. They depress you and you know it. They depress me. Same thing goes for chain letters. Now, these are supposed to be illegal, but I get 1 or more each week on the Internet. They all start off the same way….”You won’t believe this, but if you’ll just e-mail this letter to 25 of your closest friends, within 10 days you should receive $198,345.27 in the mail. This is not a joke.” Now, I know this isn’t a joke, but have you ever, in your life heard of anyone, ever getting any money, from a chain letter? Neither have I. How many have we filled out in our lifetimes? In the old days, you had to make copies, fill out the addresses and put a stamp on the 10 copies and send them out. I hated to get them. I’d sit and look at the letter and swear this would be my last one to send out. But, you know in your heart of hearts that if you didn’t, then sure as heck, someone would make a zillion bucks and you wouldn’t get squat since you broke the chain. So, you’d send them out and wait. And if you’re like me, you’re still waiting. How many of you out there have 6 or more magazines that you never read, because you think signing up for them increases your chances of winning the 10 million dollar Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes? Raise your hands. Yep, just as I thought, most of you. You can always tell a sweepstakes addict when you go to their house for coffee. You’ll see copies of “Today’s Crochet World”, “Vegetable Growers Monthly” and ” Toolman” lying around everywhere. None have been read. Who has the time? I can’t keep up with the news in the paper and at work, much less magazines on subjects I’m not really interested in. I just bought the dumb things because I wanted to move up to “Level One” or whatever. I’ll bet those folks at Publishers get a big kick out of some of the dumb stuff we sign up for. I wish we could see what they do when they open the envelopes. Do the ones without any orders get treated any differently than the ones with my check and subscription to “Dog Lovers America.”? We don’t even have a dog. But we all think we increase our chances by buying something, don’t we? Why else would we buy so much useless junk that we don’t need or can use? Well, I believe that eventually something has to change and I will end up winning something if I just hang in there long enough. However, since I’ve never won anything by spending money, I am now going to adopt the idea that the only safe thing to enter is the free thing. No more lottery tickets, no more unwanted magazines. Nope, not going to do it. Just the free stuff. No matter what. I haven’t won anything so far, and that’s ok with me. I can live with it. I’m a grown man, and besides those things are probably rigged anyway. They probably selected the winners months ago. Or maybe there aren’t any winners? Most of the time, they just list them by their first names and an initial. Which I always thought was strange. How many Carol W’s are there in Chicago anyway? So, there it is. I‘ve decided that if luck is to smile on me, then it’ll have to do so on it’s own with no help from me. But wait a minute, there are 10 black birds sitting outside my window. It’s 3 in the afternoon on the 20th of the month. These might be really good numbers. Maybe I shouldn’t waste them…perhaps this is a sign. What if they won and I didn’t play? Maybe just this one time. Send your good comments to me at www.pearyperry.com. Save your negative ones. I’ll call you. |
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